The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-03-27
AMONG THE VOLCANOES.
A Vivid Description Of Mauna lIoa as Seen
After the January Eruption.

KAHuLIN, Maui II. l., Feb. 19-I know
nothing more difficult to get an idea Of from
reading than volcano. I did not hurry to see
mine. lived on lava for months. walked on it,
climbed up it, was never off it except when on
water. All the stone here is lava and coral,
all the soil is lava, more or less reduced. You
walk for miles over bare rocks where scarcely
lichen has started-lava formed beyond the
memory or tradition of man. You ,iimb mount
aims; lava and lava debris every where. You
gallon over the turf, anywhere you can;
with stick dig down to lava,
solid. continuous. You penetrate valleys where
the ferns are thirty feet high. where a tangle Of
vegetation hardly lets you reach the ground,
and you 60 on tree tops, and have forty feet of
soil between you and the lava-bed beneath.
Pick I'D handful Of soil as you walk through
the street. 1t is red as brick sooty to the
touch, more like the contents OF an old chimney
than Indiana soil. Things grow in it, and
seem to like it. That is one Of the mysteries
But all this time you are on an island, on which
there is no tradition of an eruption, where only
wise man can tell what once was orator
But one morning you wake to find the air heavy
with smoke, the ocean hazy with it, and are told
You are on Kanai, the volcano is on Hawaii,
hundreds of miles away. You start on a steamer
for Honolulu. There you find the smell of sui
phur always in the air, the air heavy with
smoke and sitting. Vague rumors meet you.
Not s'the volcano" that every one visits, but
Mauna Loa is active You can find out but little,
Hawaii is still $50 miles away and only one
steamer has come in since the disturbance be-
gan. You take another steamer, the Hall this
time, and leaving Honolulu Friday, Jan. 20,
m al INV nEai hat mil ho q
great fish, is the ridge in the middle.
You think of the lepers the other side that
are dead to the world. You cross
the channel and stop on Maui, steam
on again. and Saturday morning finds you
in sight of Hawaii, largest ana latest born OF
all the Hawaiian Islands. that in some queer
way have with us the name of Sandwich. You
see distant mountains in long ridges, and in
front, in the valleys and along the beach. are
villages of natives. from which come canoes
loaded with delicious fruits great brown oranges,
the finest ever tasted, pineapples. sugar cane,
cocoanuts. etc. They bring hats. too, and are so
bright, and pleased, and handsome. it is pleas
ure to trade with them.
We steam along the coast or rock laZily In q
har Dor, while all the time the great banner of
| smoke streams to the left of US, and the great
tits like the side of great egg half buried in
the sand SO gradual is the slope, SO fiat the sum-
nit We do not see the top, the smoke covers it
so thickly. As the sun sets in a strange glow in
seem to assume warmer tints, and as the dark
ness increases, on the edge of the slope the
top appears what looks like canons mouth
pointed to the sky. The blast within rises, and
| falls, and fickers while the cloud above, in
| shape OF q Chinaman's hat inverted CLOVIS from
| dark pink to blood red Fires, like camp fires,
| begin to appear here and there on the sides of
Mauna Loa. More and more show till one can
trace one path from the eruption to the
| sea- where cloud Of steam marks its entrance.
| This is on the left side of the crater, zigzag
| path growing brighter and brighter. while on the
| right the stream of lava divides when part way
| dawn, and the two streams have already found
the sea- Sometimes from the lava light you see
spurts of fire and Pickering, waverng flames
| that shoot up and die away; but generally it is
the glow of a coal fire. We watch it all night as
| we swing at anchor in front Of it, and early in
the morning make our landing at Punalun,
where the next day, Monday we 60 on horseback
sixteen miles to the lava flow. or
rather to cattle ranch that the
great flow of 1868, dividing. surrounded.
| The flows here are of two kinds. Where the
| whole mass cools at once it is called pahochoe.
| and is smooth enough to travel over; but often
| 1t cools above while still molten below. The
| crust formed breaks into masses like COKE some
| pieces weighing many tons, others small as your
| color. This is called "a, and is often carried
miles by the red-hot lava beneath. which it
| prevents from cooling. We found 1t piled
! forty feet above the land, and filing valleys.
| Travelling over it would be like going over miles
of coke dumped from the cars. The pile is forty
feet high twenty to forty miles long, and some
times three miles wide; but it is
not possible for horses to cross
new government road and desert
| for hundreds OF years. The flow we are watch
ing is over lava only. 1t has buried no fertile
corn fields, destroyed towns in its passage to
| thesea.
In our sixteen mile ride we cross several flows
and see more; some bare. as If still hot; some
| with here and there a fern morning glory
| We see where a tidal wave forty feet high fol-
| lowed the earthquakes OF 1868, and the whole
l coast sunk three feet We ride the govern
| ment road over hills like cliffs, all made of a-a
some old, some new, as geologist counts time:
| we ride for miles pahoeAoe; we see cane
| fields spread on the mountain sides; we pass
| two pretty villages full of flowers; galop
over upland meadows; We cross the great
| flow of 1868, and are made kindly welcome at
Mrs Joness, from whose yard we can look down
on the pahochoe of 1868. and across it to the
IA of 1887, as it lies simmerng and smoking
| and steaming two miles away The next day
| we visited it. aud bllstered our fingers and
burnt our shoes. Those who have emptied
base burner of its still hot coke can fancy miles
Of such stuff. stick thrust in will burn at
once. You can't stand long in one place; as
you walk II will suddenly settle down eight or
ten feet as though the crust below had broken.
1t smokes in many places it is too hot to go on.
You soc the hot air all over it, and smell
the sulphur, but the bright lava
stream is far beneath, out Of sight
They tell you that only week ago this was all
bright as it came down from that distant dome;
that higher up there still bright places where
near the source the lava still flows; bat they are
very hard to reach, difficult and dangerous.
The pahochoe is by far the more interesting.
| Between the house and the a flow of 1887 is a
| pahochoe of 1868. After visiting the new flow
| became so much interested in the pahochoe of
1868 that l spent part of day there. have
| heard that in Pompeii one finds human skeletons
| in every position. doing everything that love.
! hope, fear, honor avarice. despair or terror